MS. PERINO: Okay, hello. Before I begin, I would like to welcome
two people to the briefing room. One, we're happy to welcome back Helen
Thomas. We're glad to have you here. We missed you a great deal, and
we'll let the sparring begin here in just an instant. (Laughter.)

And we are also honored to have Zina Bhaia with us today. Where is
she? There she is. Hi. Zina is a 2002 graduate from Baghdad
University. She came to the United States in December of 2007 to
continue her education, and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in
broadcast journalism at the University of Illinois, which happens to be
my alma mater where I got my graduate degree, as well. So, welcome to
you. We're glad you're here.

A couple of things today. One thing the President and Mrs. Bush
did this morning that you might be interested in is they taped an
interview with StoryCorps, which some of you may have heard -- their
programs air on NPR quite regularly. This is an oral history project,
and the President and Mrs. Bush decided to participate. StoryCorps will
be launching what they're going to call a "National Day of Listening"
campaign. So the President and Mrs. Bush will launch that. The
interview was conducted by the President's sister, Doro. And it's
expected that the audio from this morning's interview will be made
available also to visitors to the President's library when that's up and
running in a few years from now.

This afternoon, at 1:40 p.m., the President will make remarks to
the 2008 NCAA sports champions. Nine men and women's teams will be in
attendance. Also, this evening, the President will make remarks at the
2008 Bishop John T. Walker Memorial Dinner and receive the 2008 Bishop
John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award. Mrs. Bush will
also attend the event. The Africare Bishop John T. Walker Memorial
Dinner is one of the largest annual events for Africa in the United
States, and the proceeds from the event support Africare's mission to
improve the quality of life in Africa. The President will be presented
with the award, which recognizes outstanding dedication to improving the
quality of life for the people of Africa.

One final note. This afternoon, the White House Transition
Coordinating Council will have its third meeting. They will continue to
talk about the administration's activities to ensure a smooth transition
of power. Just a reminder that we established the council in October,
and we've been obviously talking about that a lot lately, and we've been
working the President-elect's team on a range of issues. So I'm sure
that we might have a little bit of update for you after that. But
they're going to be meeting regularly, and we'll try to get you in at
some point for some b-roll that you've asked about.

Questions. Jennifer.

Q I want to talk about automakers.

MS. PERINO: Okay.

Q We keep asking you either questions in the weeds of what will
you or not do for the automakers, and also the broader question of will
the administration let any one of the automakers fail, And I want to go
to the broader question, which is, will you allow one of the automakers
to fail, or will you step in? You keep saying they're important to the
economy, but they have problems with their business model. But what is
the bottom line position?

MS. PERINO: We want these companies to succeed. We want all
companies in America to succeed. There are questions regarding some of
the automakers right now in regards to their earnings. You have seen
them, and they've been transparent. We have said for a while that we've
been talking with the automakers. You've known that the President has
been meeting with them.

The President also championed through CAFE increases, which the
companies were trying to deal with. One of the ways to help deal with
that was a law that was passed in December of 2007 through the energy
bill that would allow for those companies to apply for loans. It would
help them retool their companies. That was authorized in December of
2007, but no money was appropriated for it by the Congress until August
of 2008. As soon as that money was appropriated, we started working on
the legislation -- I'm sorry, on the regulation that would govern how we
would appropriate the money. We set a land speed record to try to get
that done. It was done last week and they've started taking
applications.

It won't necessarily be an immediate fix. And what we've said we
would do is we would look to Congress and ask them if they are willing
to amend that legislation or figure out some way to accelerate those
funds so that there would be a loan to a company.

Now, one thing that's very important, in that authorization
language Congress very wisely said that the companies would need to be
viable in order to receive taxpayer dollars. I think everyone can agree
that you wouldn't want taxpayer dollars going to something that would
not be a longtime concern or something that could actually succeed in
the future. I know that those companies are working hard on that.

And we are going to work with Congress. We're open to their ideas.
We've seen -- we have a letter from Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid
asking us to look at the feasibility and whether or not we would be able
to use TARP funding for that. We don't think that that was Congress's
intent. So we feel that we have done what we could with the statutes
that have been authorized. But we are studying that letter, and
Secretary Paulson -- I don't think he's responded yet.

Q So does that mean, bottom line, that what you would like to
see is that either the tools that have been passed already or maybe
something that Congress might do in the next week, that that could work?
But what if it doesn't? Are you -- is the administration willing to be
more aggressive, to ask Congress for more, to do more on its own and not
allow one of the automakers to go under?

MS. PERINO: What I know and what I can tell you is that we're
working with what we have. And we've done that to the extent that we
are able to under the authorization provided by Congress. If they are
going to amend or accelerate those funds, we will certainly listen to
their ideas and work with them. But I'm just not able to say
hypothetically what will happen. Hopefully the companies will be able
to figure out a way to survive and it won't ever come to that. But it's
just too early to say, and I shouldn't speculate on it.

Jon.

Q What does Congress need to do to accelerate the loan program
under the DOE --

MS. PERINO: I don't know. It would be up to people who write
legislation and think about how it would work out. I'd have to refer
you to Speaker Pelosi's office and Leader Reid's office. And hopefully
they're talking to their Republican counterparts about if they do want
to move forward, how they would do that.

Q Do you think it would be helpful if they removed the language
referring to the viability, to the need for viability --

MS. PERINO: We think the Congress was very wise in setting some
limits on these loans because a viable company is something that you
think that you would want to be able to help; a non-viable company is
probably not something that you would want to help, because in the long
run the taxpayers wouldn't get their money's worth.

Q You say that you don't think it was Congress's intention to
use TARP funding for this, and yet, the administration has interpreted
the use of the TARP funds in a very different way than the original
stated purpose. If you're concerned about the auto industry, why not
allow some creative thinking to make additional room for them?

MS. PERINO: I disagree with that just a little bit, because while
we were discussing the rescue package, the TARP funds, that was very
much solely focused on financial institutions and making sure that we
did not allow our financial system to collapse. And the actions that
we've taken so far are working. So that's one side of it.

At the same time, Congress was talking about the 136 loans, as
they're called, from the Department of Energy, and they asked us to
accelerate those and we did that. While the Secretary of the Treasury
has a range of tools under this umbrella called TARP, of which he just
spent about an hour talking about, there are a lot of different things
that fall under that umbrella. But helping specific companies or
specific industries outside of the financial sector were not -- was not
included in that discussion.

Q Dana, are you saying that the automakers are a bad investment?

MS. PERINO: I didn't say that. I said that that determination
about getting a loan from the Department of Energy through that program
means that the company has to be viable. And I'm not the judge of what
is a viable company or not. That would be made -- that would be a
determination made by the Department of Energy and the Treasury.

Q Dana, can I follow up on Jennifer's question and phrase it in
a different way? When the government stepped in with Fannie and Freddie
and AIG, the definition of the bottom line was that they were deemed too
big to fail. Does that not apply to the auto industry, specifically to
the Big Three? Does the administration believe they do not fit that
criteria that they're too big to fail?

MS. PERINO: I'm not saying that. What I will focus on is the
systemic problems that we felt we had with Fannie and Freddie and AIG
and others because of the way that they're interconnected through the
whole system, and that our capitalistic system is fueled by money moving
through the system and it had ground to a halt. And we've got those
credit markets open again so that money is starting to flow. And that's
how our system works. And so that -- those discussions and those
efforts were focused on financial firms. It wasn't focused specifically
on any one industry or any one company.

Matt.

Q The administration, the President in particular, did allow
some airlines, major airlines to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection after 9/11. Is there any reason to believe that there's been
a red line established that would not allow automakers to go in that
direction?

MS. PERINO: I'm not going to rule anything in or out. It's just
-- that's not appropriate for me to do. You know the facts. Certainly
there are -- Chapter 11 exists, and some companies choose to go that
route. But I'm not here to speak for the automakers as to what they may
or may not do.

Q Dana, what do you say to some lawmakers -- Senator Levin did
an interview over the weekend with CNN and he said, "These problems have
been blossoming under the Bush administration. If the domestic auto
industry falls apart, it's going to be part of his legacy, so he has not
only a responsibility, but a necessity to act." Is there anything --
again, if what you're suggesting, that Congress could do -- if that
doesn't happen, is there anything unilaterally the President can do?
And is he concerned that this could become the capstone of his legacy --
companies like GM failing?

MS. PERINO: People can blame the President of the United States
for a lot of things, a lot of things land on his desk. But the state of
the automakers right now is not the President of the United States'
fault. And so I would encourage the media to go back and look at the
history of these companies, decisions they've made over time that got
them to where we are today.

Now, what they've had to deal with are a lot of changing consumer
preferences. That's one of the reasons that we accelerated the
rulemaking after the Congress passed the appropriations to allow us to
provide for loans so that they could retool their companies and their
factories so that they could produce more energy-efficient cars, which
is what consumers have been wanting. We believe that American
manufacturers can compete on a global level and they can produce some of
the best products in the world. That's one of the reasons we're such a
great country today, because of the manufacturing sector.

But the state of these companies is not the fault of the President
of the United States. We are trying to help them in a variety of ways.
I have told you that the Secretary of the Treasury, the Department of
Energy, and others -- Department of Commerce -- have been trying to work
with those companies, in regular contact with them, to make sure that we
are doing all that we could given what Congress has allowed us to do.

And one thing that you should go back and look at are some of the
restrictions that they have tried to place on companies over the years
there in Congress. So I think that a little bit of self reflection is
needed here and not finger-pointing at the administration, when we have
been trying to help them.

I'm going to go over here. Mark, did you have one?

Q I did. I was wondering if your remarks reflect the
President's view that industrial companies ought to survive or fail on
their own, without government intervention?

MS. PERINO: Well, one of the things that the President has said
when he -- when we started down this road of government intervention was
that that was not his natural instinct. He has always been a free
market guy. But when you have -- when you're the President of the
United States and you have your top advisors telling you that if we
don't take this action, and that they thought that was the best course
of action, that we could conceivably be facing something worse than the
Great Depression, then you have an obligation to act. And he trusted
his advisors. It was the right thing to do, because now we've got those
credit markets moving again.

That doesn't necessarily mean that every individual company or
every individual industry is going to be helped with taxpayer dollars.
What we tried to do was prevent the complete and total financial
collapse of our system. And that's what we're trying to do, we're
trying to implement that. Secretary Paulson just spent an hour
discussing how they're moving forward. They're trying to be very
transparent with the taxpayers' money, and they're trying to make the
best investments, because we want to make sure the taxpayers either are
made whole or that they can actually make some money on this deal over
time. But it's going to take us a while to get through this. Secretary
Paulson said that we're still in a very fragile situation. It's going
to take some more strengthening.

One of the things that we'll do this weekend, when the 20 leaders
are here for the summit, is talk about what we can do to help prevent
this from happening, or happening in the future, to such a severe
degree. And I should have mentioned, at 3:00 p.m. today, Dave McCormick
and Dan Price will be here and they'll provide a briefing for you to
give you an update on that meeting.

Q Dana, same topic. Will the administration then accept an
amendment from Congress to modify the part to include automakers?

MS. PERINO: I would really want to see what they would put forward
and how they would design it and how they would think about moving
forward. A lot of information -- or a lot of deal-making in Washington
is made, but you can't really make any deals until you see what the
other side is proposing. And so far, we don't even know if they're
actually coming back for a lame-duck session. So I would refer you to
the Speaker's office for more information about that.

Q Same topic. Does it enter into the President's thinking that
the President-elect would be more amenable, apparently, to opening up
the TARP? And in light of the President's thoughts that there should be
sort of a smooth, seamless transition, does what the next President
would do on this same subject enter into his thinking in terms of --

MS. PERINO: Well, we're certainly talking to them, and as we said,
we want to see what the Democrats would put forward. And I would assume
that Pelosi and Reid are talking to Senator -- I'm sorry, the
President-elect's team. I could only assume that; we certainly are.
And we are mindful of the fact that they're going to have to keep this
baton and keep running with it, and they're going to have to implement
programs. But we also know that we're not going to move forward with
something that Congress hasn't authorized us to do. And so we're
looking to see if Congress is going to make any changes.

April.

Q Dana, on this issue but somewhat in another angle. As this
whole industry issue is being worked out, is it a simple -- is the
situation just a simple -- for words to come from this house to say for
the American public to buy domestic cars? Even with the bad economy and
people not buying cars right now as they were months ago, is one of the
situations, one of the solutions, to just say, look, let's start buying
more American cars?

MS. PERINO: President Bush doesn't dictate what people should buy.
They can make their own decisions. And one of the things that we talked
about yesterday and will continue to talk about is that we believe that
we can compete on a global scale. There are three free trade agreements
currently in front of Congress that they could take up and they could
pass easily. It's the best way to open up markets and create jobs here
in America.

We have big manufacturers, like Caterpillar, that try to sell into
Colombia. They do so, and their products are taxed. When Colombian
imports come into our country, they're not taxed. We simply want to
level the playing field. That's something that if they do decide to
come back for a lame-duck session next week that we would strongly
encourage them to do, because if you're serious about opening new
markets and creating jobs, we have the best way to do that right here in
front of us, which are the free trade agreements.

Another point, though, is that the President thinks that consumers
should be able to buy anything that they want to buy. I mean, that's
one of the reasons we're trying to improve the economy, get us back on a
path to prosperity so that you have all the choice in the world. The
President of the United States has chosen down at his ranch a domestic
vehicle, but that doesn't mean that he would dictate to anybody else
what they should buy.

Q Choice is also some of the reason why the auto industry --
you're seeing stock prices way down, three, four and five dollars for
many of these auto -- domestic auto companies. And also you're seeing
more foreign cars being sold in America, and that is some of the reason
why we're in this -- we're seeing this auto industry problem.

MS. PERINO: Well, we need to be a country that is open to foreign
investment and that is open to trade. And that's one of the President's
key messages that you'll hear from him tomorrow in his speech in New
York and then at the summit this weekend, that we are a country that
should be open for investment and that he encourages it. We went
through this on a whole -- another topic in February of 2006, when we
talked about Dubai Ports, and you know what the President's position has
been. We should be open for trade, we should be open for investment,
and we should have the confidence to believe that we can compete on a
global scale, because we can.

Connie.

Q Does the President believe any of the foreign policy
situations we've had in the past few years -- Iraq, Afghanistan and so
forth -- had anything to do with this economic crisis?

MS. PERINO: Not that I'm aware of, no.

Sam.

Q On a different topic, the President-elect just announced that
former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Congressman Jim
Leach will serve as his representatives to the G20. Has there been
discussion about what role they might play?

MS. PERINO: I just saw the report myself, although I don't know
if, in the discussions with the President-elect's team, there had been
some discussion. We think that that's a -- it's a good idea to make
sure that there's good, fluid communication between his team and leaders
who want to establish relationships with the new President and his
representatives. So we welcome it.

Go ahead, Les.

Q Thank you, Dana. Two questions. Since you are the
President's chief media officer, you are no doubt aware of the news that
the Ombudsman of The Washington Post admitted in print that that
newspaper showed extensive favoritism towards candidate Obama. And my
question: Have you wondered why she waited until after the election to
admit this, while blaming no one at the Post by name for this biased
reporting and editing?

MS. PERINO: I won't comment on it, except to say that I read the
Ombudsman column every weekend.

Q Okay. The President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago, which is Obama's hometown
-- (laughter) -- noted, in his express opposition to Roe v. Wade: "If
the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision were still settled
constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be President." And my question:
Does the President agree or disagree with Cardinal George?

MS. PERINO: All I would say is that the President has said that he
thinks it was a wonderful and inspiring moment when President-Elect
Obama won on Tuesday night, a week ago.

MS. PERINO: I believe not, because I was here, I worked as the
communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality, and he
has long championed -- and he was the first to increase CAFE standards
for SUVs and light trucks for the first time in a decade.

MS. PERINO: There was a National Academy of Sciences report that
said that, yes. And when you are working on CAFE standards, one of the
things that you take into account is the safety of the vehicles. And I
don't think anybody in this room would suggest that we shouldn't do
that.

Goyal.

Q Two questions. One, according to The Washington Post,
tomorrow Saudi Arabia had religious tolerance conference at the United
Nations. But Saudi Arabia doesn't tolerate other religions, and also
rights of the woman and human rights. And President and Dr. Rice also
are going to be attending this conference.

MS. PERINO: Yes. Tomorrow in New York City, the President will
make remarks at the U.N. High Level Debate on Interfaith Dialogue. This
will be an opportunity for him to reaffirm his commitment to religious
freedom and tolerance, and the importance of people of all faiths coming
together. He welcomes the opportunity to have this event and he
believes that the King of Saudi Arabia has recognized that they have a
long way to go and that he is trying to take some steps to get there.
But this -- and this dialogue is a good way to bring people of all
religions together. And you'll hear more from the President tomorrow.

Q And second, in Pakistan, U.S. consulate was hit. Do you think
this is a warning for this administration and the coming new
administration?

MS. PERINO: I've seen the reports, Goyal. I'm going to decline to
comment now because I don't have further information. Let me just take
a last one from Mark.

Q Is the Federal Hall speech -- is it just trade, or is it a
broader message to Wall Street?

MS. PERINO: It's focused on the summit. And what I'm going to try
to do later today if I can -- and we'll try to release those remarks for
you. I don't know if we'll be able to accomplish that, but we'll get it
for you as soon as we can.

Q I think Helen had a question.

MS. PERINO: Helen has a question.

Q Yes, I do. You say the President is not at fault for the auto
industry problem. Do you think he's responsible for a solution?

MS. PERINO: Well, I think that he --

Q And also, is there a quid pro quo on the Colombia trade
agreement?

MS. PERINO: There is absolutely no quid pro quo for that. And I
was able to clarify that yesterday, and I was pleased that the
President-elect's team clarified that as well. But I think that the
President of the United States believes that companies are responsible
for finding solutions. However, this is an industry, as I've said
before, that's very important to the American people. And there are a
lot of regulations that the government has tried to place on these
companies over the years. And so Congress and the administration and
the companies have an obligation to put their best minds towards trying
to find out -- figure out what we can do to the greatest extent possible
to try to keep these companies viable. And if we can do that, we
certainly will.

Q Is he aware that Michigan has 9 percent unemployment?

MS. PERINO: Very well aware of it. And he's been very concerned
about it. It's one of the reasons that he agreed to the UI extension
from -- unemployment insurance extension that we provided in August.
And we'll see what the Congress puts forward on that if they come back
for a lame duck.

Q Is he aware that Detroit won World War II by retooling in a
matter of days to a wartime condition?

MS. PERINO: He know how important Detroit is, how -- its history,
the industry, and how many people it supports, not just in Detroit, but
all across our country, and the people all around the world who work for
those corporations. He's very mindful of it.

Q Dana, can I follow? At the risk of -- you said we'll see what
Congress puts forward on an unemployment extension if they come back.
It seems to me in the past, you opposed that, saying that it encourages
people to stay out of work longer.

MS. PERINO: What we have said is that -- well, if you just look at
the statistics, the historical data, that as soon as that last week
comes about, that's -- it's like a hockey stick and people's employment
goes up. But it doesn't mean that we're not mindful of the fact that --
how distressed some people are because we realize how high unemployment
is, how tough the economy is, and how it's taken a while to get people
back to work. And so, we'll just see if Congress comes back with
anything.